Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray told attendees at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen that an iPad Mini was "highly likely," and that he had talked to manufacturers in Asia who are already supplying Apple with components for what we're still tentatively calling the iTV.

"The TV thing is real," Munster said. "It's just a function of time. Some suppliers are more open in talking about it than others."

His best guess on that timing for iTV? Probably by the end of 2012, possibly launching in 2013. Munster told Mashable that early versions of the set would probably still rely on the Apple TV set-top box, but that later versions would have it built in.

As for the 7-inch iPad Mini, Munster says it makes strong business sense for Apple to expand its product line to the low end of the market — it currently has 90% of the 10-inch tablet market, but 75% of the tablet market as a whole.

But he pointed out that it would be the first example of the company specifically reacting to its competition — from tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 — and also the first example of it going against the wishes of its late founder Steve Jobs, who frequently dismissed the idea of a tablet smaller than 10 inches.

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